Spinning a company out of the university, based on university scientific research involves a number of key steps: Recognizing the Opportunity Disclosure to the University Filing for IP Protection ...
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Spinning a company out of the university, based on university scientific research involves a number of key steps: Recognizing the Opportunity Disclosure to the University Filing for IP Protection Recruiting Advisors and Mentors Developing the Business Case Forming the Company Building the Management Team Licensing the Intellectual Property Gathering Market Information Defining and Refining the Business Model Early-Stage Marketing Writing The Business Plan Raising Initial Capital Finding Space Raising Growth Capital Developing the Product Engaging the Customer: Marketing, Sales, and Business Development Establishing Manufacturing The Exit Each step is considered in detail with practical recommendations based on the authors’ experience.Less

Key Steps to a Start-Up

Don RoseCam Patterson

Published in print: 2016-01-15

Spinning a company out of the university, based on university scientific research involves a number of key steps: Recognizing the Opportunity Disclosure to the University Filing for IP Protection Recruiting Advisors and Mentors Developing the Business Case Forming the Company Building the Management Team Licensing the Intellectual Property Gathering Market Information Defining and Refining the Business Model Early-Stage Marketing Writing The Business Plan Raising Initial Capital Finding Space Raising Growth Capital Developing the Product Engaging the Customer: Marketing, Sales, and Business Development Establishing Manufacturing The Exit Each step is considered in detail with practical recommendations based on the authors’ experience.

Entrepreneurs often struggle with many aspects of business: planning and financing company growth, creating a company vision, recruiting, leading, and managing people, as well as personal costs. In ...
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Entrepreneurs often struggle with many aspects of business: planning and financing company growth, creating a company vision, recruiting, leading, and managing people, as well as personal costs. In this book, more than fifty business owners and entrepreneurs offer a wealth of real-life stories—in their own words—that provide rare insights about keeping a company healthy and growing. Here is a unique collection of first-person accounts by entrepreneurs, who describe their mistakes in business and the lessons they have learned as a result. The stories cover a wide range of experiences, from the trials and tribulations of partnerships, to the loss of key customers, theft, finding and retaining employees, and the personal cost of living on the edge. The authors have drawn on interviews with more than 50 entrepreneurs, all of whom are under forty-five years of age and are founders or presidents of companies with revenues over $1 million and growing rapidly. They volunteered to share their stories, describing why they lost or almost lost their companies, what they did wrong, and the lessons they have learned. Their narratives are full of mistakes, failure, courage, moments of realization, and timely moves that saved the day.Less

Lessons From the Edge : Survival Skills for Starting and Growing a Company

Jana MatthewsJeff DennisPeter Economy

Published in print: 2003-09-04

Entrepreneurs often struggle with many aspects of business: planning and financing company growth, creating a company vision, recruiting, leading, and managing people, as well as personal costs. In this book, more than fifty business owners and entrepreneurs offer a wealth of real-life stories—in their own words—that provide rare insights about keeping a company healthy and growing. Here is a unique collection of first-person accounts by entrepreneurs, who describe their mistakes in business and the lessons they have learned as a result. The stories cover a wide range of experiences, from the trials and tribulations of partnerships, to the loss of key customers, theft, finding and retaining employees, and the personal cost of living on the edge. The authors have drawn on interviews with more than 50 entrepreneurs, all of whom are under forty-five years of age and are founders or presidents of companies with revenues over $1 million and growing rapidly. They volunteered to share their stories, describing why they lost or almost lost their companies, what they did wrong, and the lessons they have learned. Their narratives are full of mistakes, failure, courage, moments of realization, and timely moves that saved the day.

More often than not, entrepreneurs are more concerned with the innovation of products and selling and distributing these products when starting businesses. The leadership aspect is usually undermined ...
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More often than not, entrepreneurs are more concerned with the innovation of products and selling and distributing these products when starting businesses. The leadership aspect is usually undermined as entrepreneurs fail to consider the vision, mission, and culture of the company, let alone managing human resources, attaining outside investments, and planning ahead for the growth of the company. Being a leader is difficult especially as the roles and duties of a leader changes as the company undergoes further development. Though the leadership style may be important, entrepreneurs must not forget this fundamental principle: one has fully understood what it means to be—specifically the roles and responsibilities—of a leader.Less

Leadership

Jana MatthewsJeff Dennis

Published in print: 2003-09-04

More often than not, entrepreneurs are more concerned with the innovation of products and selling and distributing these products when starting businesses. The leadership aspect is usually undermined as entrepreneurs fail to consider the vision, mission, and culture of the company, let alone managing human resources, attaining outside investments, and planning ahead for the growth of the company. Being a leader is difficult especially as the roles and duties of a leader changes as the company undergoes further development. Though the leadership style may be important, entrepreneurs must not forget this fundamental principle: one has fully understood what it means to be—specifically the roles and responsibilities—of a leader.

Entrepreneurs need to give more attention and emphasis to establishing the organization as this will greatly support the firm's growth. This chapter points out how important it is to hire the right ...
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Entrepreneurs need to give more attention and emphasis to establishing the organization as this will greatly support the firm's growth. This chapter points out how important it is to hire the right people for the company—people who would fully realize the goals and missions of the business and would possess the appropriate work ethics. These people should be able to learn and perform their assigned tasks well. Once these people are found, they have to be lead and managed through sharing the company's visions, allowing them to participate in the planning process, communicating, measuring, and assessing performance and other such indicators. Otherwise, the company need to learn how to distinguish those who do not meet expectations and perform the appropriate measures to deal with such people.Less

People

Jana MatthewsJeff Dennis

Published in print: 2003-09-04

Entrepreneurs need to give more attention and emphasis to establishing the organization as this will greatly support the firm's growth. This chapter points out how important it is to hire the right people for the company—people who would fully realize the goals and missions of the business and would possess the appropriate work ethics. These people should be able to learn and perform their assigned tasks well. Once these people are found, they have to be lead and managed through sharing the company's visions, allowing them to participate in the planning process, communicating, measuring, and assessing performance and other such indicators. Otherwise, the company need to learn how to distinguish those who do not meet expectations and perform the appropriate measures to deal with such people.

Once up and operating, most of the technology-based companies develop, discover and admit to a larger and growing need for funds beyond their initial financing. This chapter investigates the need for ...
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Once up and operating, most of the technology-based companies develop, discover and admit to a larger and growing need for funds beyond their initial financing. This chapter investigates the need for additional financing of high-technology firms, and the time-consuming efforts by their entrepreneurs to raise the funds. It examines the subsequent capital acquisitions by the technical enterprise, including the search processes employed by the entrepreneurs in seeking venture capital, the role of business plans, and the nature of venture capitalist decisions of venture capital organizations.Less

Finding Additional Financing

Edward B. Roberts

Published in print: 1991-11-14

Once up and operating, most of the technology-based companies develop, discover and admit to a larger and growing need for funds beyond their initial financing. This chapter investigates the need for additional financing of high-technology firms, and the time-consuming efforts by their entrepreneurs to raise the funds. It examines the subsequent capital acquisitions by the technical enterprise, including the search processes employed by the entrepreneurs in seeking venture capital, the role of business plans, and the nature of venture capitalist decisions of venture capital organizations.

Over the years, there has been a widespread tendency in the innovation literature to make the assumption that innovation is always good. Yet as this chapter observes, innovation does not necessarily ...
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Over the years, there has been a widespread tendency in the innovation literature to make the assumption that innovation is always good. Yet as this chapter observes, innovation does not necessarily benefit society at large. It may also be of the “destructive creation” type, as the chapter puts it, i.e., benefitting the few at the expense of the many. Prominent cases of such “destructive” innovations may, in the financial sector, include cases allowing actors to realize large gains in the short term while invoking even greater costs for society as a whole at a later stage. In manufacturing, examples include innovations involving planned obsolescence, and innovations leading to unsustainable consumption growth and environmental degradation. All this raises an important problem for policy and scholarly work, namely how to design mechanisms – or selection environments – that prevent such socially destructive innovations from spreading while at the same time stimulating socially constructive innovations.Less

Is Innovation Always Good?

Soete Luc

Published in print: 2013-10-31

Over the years, there has been a widespread tendency in the innovation literature to make the assumption that innovation is always good. Yet as this chapter observes, innovation does not necessarily benefit society at large. It may also be of the “destructive creation” type, as the chapter puts it, i.e., benefitting the few at the expense of the many. Prominent cases of such “destructive” innovations may, in the financial sector, include cases allowing actors to realize large gains in the short term while invoking even greater costs for society as a whole at a later stage. In manufacturing, examples include innovations involving planned obsolescence, and innovations leading to unsustainable consumption growth and environmental degradation. All this raises an important problem for policy and scholarly work, namely how to design mechanisms – or selection environments – that prevent such socially destructive innovations from spreading while at the same time stimulating socially constructive innovations.

Figuring out how to show that your problem is wrong is, in essence, how you work your way through innovating. As you do so, try to imagine the next thing about your innovation prototype that will ...
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Figuring out how to show that your problem is wrong is, in essence, how you work your way through innovating. As you do so, try to imagine the next thing about your innovation prototype that will “kill” your mission. Make it a routine to assume that you will fail, and go systematically through all the parts and insights that make up your prototype to prove it will indeed not work. You are searching for a culprit that would turn an error at one scale into a failure at the next scale, and you do that by interrogating your prototype with parts and with insights you get from people. As you go along, you ought to find it easier to add new parts and insights that you don’t believe will work together; pose the same questions, and find the near misses—all of which carry information of value to you. This is how you commandeer nonlinearities and make your innovating robust.Less

Operating on the Problem through Trial and Error

Luis Perez-BrevaNick Fuhrer

Published in print: 2017-03-31

Figuring out how to show that your problem is wrong is, in essence, how you work your way through innovating. As you do so, try to imagine the next thing about your innovation prototype that will “kill” your mission. Make it a routine to assume that you will fail, and go systematically through all the parts and insights that make up your prototype to prove it will indeed not work. You are searching for a culprit that would turn an error at one scale into a failure at the next scale, and you do that by interrogating your prototype with parts and with insights you get from people. As you go along, you ought to find it easier to add new parts and insights that you don’t believe will work together; pose the same questions, and find the near misses—all of which carry information of value to you. This is how you commandeer nonlinearities and make your innovating robust.

This chapter explores in some depth the implications of complexity thinking for strategy. It defines what strategy is; how ideas about strategy were developed; the balance between starting inside-out ...
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This chapter explores in some depth the implications of complexity thinking for strategy. It defines what strategy is; how ideas about strategy were developed; the balance between starting inside-out and outside-in; the strategy landscape, fashion, fluctuating environments, entrepreneurism, managed emergence, deliberate versus realized strategy, and disruptive innovation. It provides a list of advice to the strategist from a complexity perspective: build a portfolio, foresighting, weave intentions, experiment, manage by walking about, seize opportunities, find the middle ground. It then considers the ‘dangers of dominance’.Less

Complexity and Strategy

Jean BoultonPeter AllenCliff Bowman

Published in print: 2015-07-01

This chapter explores in some depth the implications of complexity thinking for strategy. It defines what strategy is; how ideas about strategy were developed; the balance between starting inside-out and outside-in; the strategy landscape, fashion, fluctuating environments, entrepreneurism, managed emergence, deliberate versus realized strategy, and disruptive innovation. It provides a list of advice to the strategist from a complexity perspective: build a portfolio, foresighting, weave intentions, experiment, manage by walking about, seize opportunities, find the middle ground. It then considers the ‘dangers of dominance’.